Thanks Ross - I have been pushing some cataloguing folk to comment on some of this as well (and have some feedback) - but I take the point that wider consultation via autocat could be a good idea. (for some reason this makes me slightly nervous!)s In terms of whether Education--England--Finance is authorised or not - I think I took from Andy's response that it wasn't, but also looking at it on authorities.loc.gov it isn't marked as 'authorised'. Anyway - the relevant thing for me at this stage is that I won't find a match via id.loc.gov - so I can't get a URI for it anyway. There are clearly quite a few issues with interacting with LCSH as Linked Data at the moment - I'm not that keen on how this currently works, and my reaction to the MADS/RDF ontology is similar to that of Bruce D'Arcus (see http://metadata.posterous.com/lcs-madsrdf-ontology-and-the-future-of-the-se), but on the otherhand I want to embrace the opportunity to start joining some stuff up and seeing what happens :) Owen On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Ross Singer <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 5:02 AM, Owen Stephens <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > Then obviously I lose the context of the full heading - so I also want to > > look for > > Education--England--Finance (which I won't find on id.loc.gov as not > > authorised) > > > > At this point I could stop, but my feeling is that it is useful to also > look > > for other combinations of the terms: > > > > Education--England (not authorised) > > Education--Finance (authorised! http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85041008 > ) > > > > My theory is that as long as I stick to combinations that start with a > > topical term I'm not going to make startlingly inaccurate statements? > > I would definitely ask this question somewhere other than Code4lib > (autocat, maybe?), since I think the answer is more complicated than > this (although they could validate/invalidate your assumption about > whether or not this approach would get you "close enough"). > > My understanding is that Education--England--Finance *is* authorized, > because Education--Finance is and England is a free-floating > geographic subdivision. Because it's also an authorized heading, > "Education--England--Finance" is, in fact, an authority. The problem > is that free-floating subdivisions cause an almost infinite number of > permutations, so there aren't LCCNs issued for them. > > This is where things get super-wonky. It's also the reason I > initially created lcsubjects.org, specifically to give these (and, > ideally, locally controlled subject headings) a publishing > platform/centralized repository, but it quickly grew to be more than > "just a side project". There were issues of how the data would be > constructed (esp. since, at the time, I had no access to the NAF), how > to reconcile changes, provenance, etc. Add to the fact that 2 years > ago, there wasn't much linked library data going on, it was really > hard to justify the effort. > > But, yeah, it would be worth running your ideas by a few catalogers to > see what they think. > > -Ross. > -- Owen Stephens Owen Stephens Consulting Web: http://www.ostephens.com Email: [log in to unmask]